A manufacturing method of an endless conveyor belt for forming an endless conveyor belt which includes an endless cover rubber part in which a tensile body (core) is embedded by joining both ends of a finite conveyor belt in a belt length direction which includes a finite cover rubber part in which a tensile body is embedded has been known in the related art. First in this method, an exposure step of exposing the tensile body is performed for the ends of the finite conveyor belt in the belt length direction. Then, in a state in which the ends of the finite conveyor belt in the belt length direction are superimposed and the tensile body exposed at the ends is disposed in an unvulcanized joining rubber member, a joining step of joining the ends of the finite conveyor belt in the belt length direction is performed by pressurizing in the belt thickness direction and heating the joining rubber member to be vulcanized.
In this manufacturing method of an endless conveyor belt, the joining rubber member is set to be thicker than the finite cover rubber part so that only the joining rubber member between the finite cover rubber part and the joining rubber portion is pressurized in the belt thickness direction and vulcanized. As a result, in the endless cover rubber part, a main body portion formed with the finite cover rubber part and a joint portion formed with the joining rubber member have different thicknesses.
As a conveyor belt apparatus which includes this type of endless conveyor belt, a configuration which includes an endless conveyor belt and a detection processing means as disclosed in, for example, Patent Document 1 mentioned below is known. This endless conveyor belt further includes a detection object. This detection object is embedded in a portion of the endless cover rubber part positioned on a front surface side of the endless cover rubber part rather than on the tensile body side. The detection object is abraded according to an amount of abrasion of the front surface of the endless cover rubber part. The detection processing means detects the detection object, and obtains an amount of abrasion of the front surface of the endless cover rubber part based on the result of the detection.